MAA Science Policy Committee Report

RECENT NEWS - March 7, 2002

The material on this site has just been refreshed and updated, and the format changed, to get ready for a change in editorship. This main page will now look more like a set of headlines or a table of contents to topics considered in greater detail at respective sub-sites within this S & T Policy site.

R & D and Related Funding (Full Details)

The FY 2003 budget cycle kicked off on February 4, 2002, with President Bush9s presentation to Congress of the administration9s funding proposals. Below, with links to subsites of this site and to other sites, we present three perspectives.

OSTP: The 2003 budget requests record levels for federal R & D ($111.8 billion, an 8 percent increase.

AAAS: Bush Proposes Large Increases for DOD, NIH R & D; Mix of Cuts and Increases for Other R & D Programs with an overall increase of 8.3 percent over FY 2002.

CNSF: The Coalition for National Science Funding For the FY 2003 NSF budget, CNSF recommends an increase of $718 million (or 15 percent) for the FY 2003 above the FY 2002 level of $4.79 billion, bringing the agency9s budget to $5.508 billion.

Higher Education, Employment & Workforce (Full Details)

ENROLLMENTS: Upper division undergraduate enrollments and bachelors degrees awarded have declined. These phenomena continue the pattern of decline over more than a decade. Lower division mathematics enrollment have increased.

ACADEMIC EMPLOYMENT in mathematics has also declined along with decline in upper division enrollments and degrees, in terms of tenure and tenure-track positions. Employment of temporary, part-time, and full time non-tenure track employment in mathematics has increased.

DISPARITY in the scope and range of programs for majors in mathematics between bachelors-only and doctoral granting programs that has always existed, may be growing to the point where a two separate but unequal systems for undergraduate mathematics education may be developing.

[Source: Preliminary Report of CBMS2000 Survey, ]

Elementary and Secondary Education (Full Details)

The Conference Board of the Mathematical Sciences has just completed a report titled the Mathematical Education of Teachers. This report is designed as a resource for mathematics faculty in colleges and universities involved in education of elementary and secondary teachers of mathematics.

Policy Perspectives(Full Details)

"Having a science policy at all implies that we have a systematic way of ordering the opportunities so finite resources can be invested to best effect." -- John Marburger

John Marburger, Director, OSTP and Science Advisor to the President sets forth the policy position behind the priorities expressed in the budget document.

William Kirwan President of the Ohio State University, sets forth a perspective -- relating particularly to mathematics - on how the current social context impacts on the profession and sets forth an action agenda in response.

The MAA Science Policy page is edited by Al Buccino (policy@maa.org) on behalf of the MAA Committee on Science Policy and The Committee on the Profession. The comments and opinions expressed here have been developed by the Science Policy Committee and do not reflect the official policy of the Mathematical Association of America.

Last Modified: - Greenwald